James--
You said:
Basically, SFC and GSFC say that you shouldn't be able to pull off a successful burying strategy just by truncating your ballot, or insincerely ranking two candidates as being equal
I reply:
No, that isn't what SFC and GSFC say. They apply to all methods, not just rank methods, and not just to truncation strategy or any offensive strategy. For instance, Pluralitly and IRV fail SFC, though not through any offensive strategy of any kind.
You're telling me what SFC and GSFC say. I suggest that since I wrote them, it's for me to say what they say. For instance, SFC says that if no one falisifes a preference, and if a majority prefer the CW to Y, and vote sincerely, then Y shouldn't win.
SFC says that, not what you claim that it says.
You continue:
-- instead, if you want to bury someone, you have to actually reverse at least one preference ordering. I recognize the usefulness of these criteria, and I consider them to be a valid point in favor of winning votes against margins, but I don't think that their importance should be overstated. That is, they don't mean that strategizing voters will have less of an ability to bury a candidate, they just means that they need to use reversal rather than truncation to do so. I submit that if voters are determined to strategize, the need to use order-reversal won't be much of a barrier.
I replly:
There's a big difference between a problem that can happen if signifilcant numbers of voters attempt offensive order-reversal, and one that happens automatically, or by mere truncation. Offensive order-reversal on a scale sufficient to affect the outcome isn't likely. When SFC says "if noone falsifies a preference", that's a convenient way to say it,but obviously the same thing is true if preference-falsification isn't done by a group large enough to change the outcome.
I always say that under certain plausible conditions, it won't be necessary to do other than rank sincerely.You object that that isn't true under all conditions. But such a nonprobabilistic method is impossible. You're asking too much. But, under the plausible conditions under which such a guarantee can be made, wv makes it, because wv meets SFC.
Mike Ossipoff
_________________________________________________________________
Don�t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
